Novel polyamidoamine dendrimer-functionalized palygorskite adsorbents with high adsorption capacity for Pb2 + and reactive dyes

• Novel PAMAM dendrimer functionalized nanopalygorskite adsorbents were synthesized.
• The NH2-terminated Pal-PAMAM adsorbents exhibit high density terminal amino groups.
• The density NH2 groups increases with increasing full generation number.
• NH2-terminated Pal-PAMAM show high adsorption capacity for Pb2 + and Reactive Red 3BS.
• The adsorption capacity increase with increasing full generation number.

Novel polyamidoamine (PAMAM) dendrimer-functionalized palygorskite (Pal) adsorbents, up to generation 4.0, with high adsorption capacity, were designed and efficiently synthesized by grafting PAMAM onto 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane-modified palygorskite (NH2-Pal) surfaces. This was carried out using a divergent method including the Michael addition of methyl acrylate (MA) and amidation of the resultant ester moieties with ethylenediamine (EDA). The optimal conditions for Michael addition were achieved using 88.8 mmol MA (relative to 4.0 g NH2-Pal) at 323 K for 24 h. The optimal conditions for amidation of the resultant esters were achieved using 179.3 mmol EDA (relative to 2.1 g Pal-PAMAM G0.5) at 323 K for 48 h. All of the amino-terminated Pal-PAMAM G(n) (n = 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4) adsorbents exhibited very high density amino-terminated groups and adsorption capacities for both Pb2 + and Reactive Red 3BS, which increased with increasing generation number. The maximum adsorption capacity for Pb2 + at 293 K was 68.5 ± 3.3, 151.1 ± 5.7, 196.5 ± 6.1, 389.1 ± 9.6 and 694.4 ± 12.9 mg/g for Pal-PAMAM G(n) (n = 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4), respectively. The maximum adsorption capacity for Reactive Red 3BS at 293 K was 34.2 ± 2.7, 69.9 ± 4.3, 122.0 ± 6.4, 242.7 ± 7.1 and 322.6 ± 6.9 mg/g for Pal-PAMAM G(n) (n = 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4), respectively.

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